MFA in Poetry, University of Massachusetts, 1971
Scholarly interests:
As a poet and instructor of creative writing in poetry, I continue to write and publish both verse and prose poetry. I am constantly connecting the writing process with the teaching of writing. New poems I read by others and those I write myself give me ideas for writing exercises. For example, in writing a prose poem about a woman named Carnelia, I described her taking a bath and imagining where the bath water ends up. This rumination on beginnings and endings and water made me ask students to research water, drainage, bath products, etc, and to contemplate what bathing is to them and what questions arise while taking a bath or shower and to write a piece called ”Drains”.
As a professor of both English and Women’s Studies, I am involved in focusing on gender as an historical category in my research and teaching concerning modern and contemporary literature and the Holocaust. I am extremely interested in how the social construction of gender influences human values and behaviors. My research involves theories of difference and power.
Recent courses:
ENG 381: Creative Writing in Poetry
ENG 369: Women in Literature
Gender and Genocide: A Study of Holocaust Literature
Race, Class, Gender and the Immigration Experience
Introduction to Women’s Studies
Searching for Venus: Exploring Ideals of Female Beauty and love in History, Psychology, and Literature Money and power in Literature
Books of Poetry:
The Lone Ranger and the New American Church, Archival Press, 1975.
The Fishes, Providence College Press, 1976.
Blowing Kisses to the Sharks, Copper Beech Press, 1978.
The Sea is Not Full, Le ’Dory Press, 1990.
Poems appearing in journals since 1997:
“Blood Somewhere” in The Prose Poem: An International Journal, 1997, “Blood Somewhere” in The Best of the Prose Poem: An International Journal, 2000, ”Deaf Sky in The Voice, 1998, “Pompeii “ and “History of Bella” in 13th Moon, 2000, “Isis” in Sentence, 2004,“Brine “ and “Treatment Plan” in Southern Poetry Review, 2001, and assorted poems in our Alembic.